"Over time, quality work will lead to an audience to your work."

- NICHOLAS SPARKS

As a user, if you have outsourced graphic design services, the basic points on which you would evaluate design quality will be its looks and features. How pretty the design looks, and how neatly the colors have been used in the design are the few criteria on the basis of which you’d be measuring the success of a design.

However, as a professional graphic designer, you would know that there are several other points on which the design quality can be, and should be, measured.

The success of a graphic design depends a lot on the basic elements of a design and its principles, and less on its features.

Evaluating design quality can be subjective, and the criteria can change depending on the type or purpose of the design itself. Looks are an important factor in this, but they alone won’t tell you if the design is effective. In the end, designs are created to communicate a message and achieve specific outcomes.

In order to evaluate design quality, it is imperative to measure its success on the basis of the purpose of the design and whether the design has managed to solve that purpose or not.

Keeping this in mind, here are 6 important things to consider (and questions you must ask) to measure the success of the design;

Does the design solve its purpose?

Right then! First things first, you must understand the objective behind creating the design and evaluate it accordingly.

Let’s say you wanted to create a design for a company logo, then the evaluation must be done on the basis of its objective. A logo design particularly helps in communicating the brand’s name and its product/services. Similarly, one must evaluate the design quality of a landing page on the basis of the number of conversions it led to.

Design isn’t simply about pixels and colors. At the very core, it’s all about problem-solving. If you identified a real problem and provided a better solution (however marginal it may be), then you succeeded.

Evaluate design quality through C.R.A.P

Contrast, Repetition, Alignment, and Proximity, are a set of the basic design principles which all graphic designing services comply with. Taking into consideration these basic elements of graphic design, the evaluation of a design can be based on the following questions:

• Is there enough contrast between design elements?
• Do design elements create a certain visual flow supported by the repetition of forms?
• Are design elements aligned with each other in a clear, readable way?
• What is the distance between design elements and what type of visual message does it create?

Go through these measurements in a design and try to solve any visible issues. If a design achieves its most basic goal, then it’s an effective one.

Is the design easy to comprehend?

The simpler a design, the easier it is to convey the message and, can be easily understood by the target audience. A successful design is one that is able to help the readers navigate through the content with ease. In graphic design terminology, it is known as the visual hierarchy.

The visual hierarchyof a design determines which elements one should be looking at and in what order. Usually, content is read from the top of a page from left to right and most designs, therefore, are created keeping that in mind.

In this digital age, our attention spans are shorter than ever, and most people will stop looking at a design if they have to work too hard to find the information they need.

Check for the typography

Let’s be honest here. Disarrayed typography can turn even a beautifully designed image into a nightmare, especially, for the readers. As a designer or, a client to an outsourced design project, you must ensure that crucial typographic mistakes are avoided; such as

• Using too many fonts
• Bad visual hierarchy
• Poor typeface choice
• Not including enough white space

All these will make your design look pretty unprofessional and harder to read. Realize that people tend to read short pieces of text, whenever they appear in a visual project. Make your text easy to find and absorb, so everyone can understand it. 

Pay attention to the color and emphasis

Remember C.R.A.P discussed earlier in this blog? Well, other essential parts of the basic elements of graphic design are the color and the emphasis. Let’s understand this in detail.

Color plays a very vital role in graphic design and is important to evaluate design quality. The choice of the color scheme used for the design must not be taken lightly as it can change the way a design is read; entirely. Remember that using strong, artificial, and incandescent colors often downgrade a design.

Additionally, in any design, there is always a central element that requires the main attention. This is where you must put an emphasis on in order to achieve the goal of creating the design.

 

Is it target-oriented?

And finally, but not least importantly, to evaluate design quality it is imperative to ensure that the design is target-oriented. You must take care of the fact that the design is in sync with what type of content your audience consumesor what is it that gets their attention.

Let’s be honest! Audiences expect a certain look in design and, as professionals, you must adhere to those expectations. Remember that you are not creating the design for yourself, but for your audience.

For example, if you are asked to create a design targeted for children, then you know that you can boldly use different bright colors, as that is something that attracts kids. Similarly, if a design needs to be created for a law firm website, it cannot be done using a rainbow color scheme.

To Conclude...

You can always create designs and run several tests to check their feasibility with your audience, however, if you don’t follow the right guidelines to evaluate design quality you’d never be able to find the right design.

You can, however, always take professional help to measure the success of your designs. GraphicsZoo has a strong team of experienced designers who work according to the basic elements and principles of graphic design. Contact us for your next graphic design services and let us bring the quality you always wanted. Let’s discuss more on your requirements at support@graphicszoo.com